In light of a rash of "mass deletions" by members in the past few months, we've disabled the ability for members to delete their own posts. These deletions have caused a fair amount of discussions to no longer make sense, and there is no way for us to bring those missing posts back.

That said, if you have a legitimate reason to remove a post, let the mod team know and we'll get to work.

That's a tough one to answer. We have three or four people on record as deleting an alarming amount of posts this year, for unknown reasons. The last time I was able to successfully contact one of them about their deletion habit, they promised not to do it again... and then did it again. Admins have access to the site's moderation logs, where actions taken by anybody on the site are on time stamped record.

My personal opinion is that it's not necessary for members to have the ability to delete content. It's too much like social media where you could just erase things and pretend they never happened.

That's a tough one to answer. We have three or four people on record as deleting an alarming amount of posts this year, for unknown reasons. The last time I was able to successfully contact one of them about their deletion habit, they promised not to do it again... and then did it again. Admins have access to the site's moderation logs, where actions taken by anybody on the site are on time stamped record.

My personal opinion is that it's not necessary for members to have the ability to delete content. It's too much like social media where you could just erase things and pretend they never happened.

The only downside I see is that there are also positive uses with the ability to delete posts. In the past I've used that particular feature to post in a thread which hasn't been updated in a while (where I have an update to add) and I am the last person to have posted in said thread. In this particular case I would copy my old post, delete the old one and then in a new post include the old post and the new update I wanted to add - thus the thread is "bumped" as being updated. It's a shame some users used it in the manner that Tessou has described, since the feature is no longer available, I can't really update an old thread as I used to before.

I hope I'm not asking too much, but it might be the best of both worlds if the user has the ability to hide his post (viewers will see his post collapsed with just the header (name and "Posted on ...")). They can then expand the post if they want.

I think that this will preserve the user's original post, which I agree, usually is vital in understanding what people are talking about, especially if they are conversing without quoting each other. Sometimes I read a thread, and people seem like they're having fun, but they're referencing a post that just doesn't exist.

At the same time, if the user feels strongly enough to want to delete it, then this will at least hide it so casual people who can't be bothered, won't go through the trouble of reading it.

Finally, it would free up the mods to wield the banhammer and wreak havoc amongst the powerless civilians. At least, they won't have to be monitoring and addressing requests for posts to be deleted. And, regular civilians won't encounter that many empty posts asking to be deleted.

I think the greatest challenge with this proposal would be the complexity in adding functionality to the software. I volunteer myself to do it, if that's acceptable.

You won't get it because N1 is entirely correct. Now back to us apparently waiting to wreak havoc on the powerless members.

No no, I'm being misinterpreted. Your time would be freed up for you to wreak havoc on powerless members, not that that is what you would spend your time doing. Instead, you could also read a book with that newly-freed up time. Just sayin' you would have more free time, which is a good thing, right?